


Solstice lights

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Christmas Decorations, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Winter Solstice, this is a story about light and love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28226301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: In the darkest days of December, they fill their home with light.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 48





	Solstice lights

**Author's Note:**

> I'm posting this story on the Winter Solstice of 2020, the longest night of what has felt like the longest year. The Good Omens fandom has been a bright spot for me in an otherwise strange and difficult year. This fic is a gift for all of you. I wish you all peace and joy, light and love.

Aziraphale has never, not once in over two hundred years, decorated the bookshop for the holidays. It would have made the place too _welcoming,_ after all, and someone might have mistaken the fairy lights and garlands for an invitation to come in and browse for, horror of horrors, a Christmas gift. 

It goes without saying that Crowley's never decorated the Mayfair flat either; tinsel and baubles don't exactly go with the aesthetic, of either the place or its owner. His neighbors, or worse, his employers, might get the wrong impression and start showing up at his door with holiday cheer (or despair, as the case may be) and gifts that he definitely did not want. And besides, there'd never been anyone to decorate _for_ or _with._

But this year, things are different. The Mayfair flat, with its cold concrete and impossibly fantastic views, has been sold, and there's a handwritten sign in the bookshop's dusty window saying that it's closed for the (very extended) holiday season and wishing all their customers a happy new year. (Aziraphale is anticipating that it will be a banner year, in which the number of customers to whom he must wish a happy new year next December will be severely reduced.) Instead, Aziraphale and Crowley are spending the end of the year in the South Downs, in the seaside cottage that they purchased together this past spring, and it doesn't matter in the least if their new neighbors get the wrong impression.

Crowley puts up a bit of a protest, of course, but somehow, come December, he finds himself bringing huge, fragrant armfuls of fresh greenery in from the garden. The fir trees and holly bushes had desperately needed to be pruned for the winter anyway. Aziraphale fashions them into long garlands of evergreen and holly that he twines around the banisters and drapes around the doorframes. A bit of mistletoe, that opportunistic parasite, has snuck in there somehow. Neither of them will admit to putting it there, but if they happen to see it draped across the lintel, its spray of white berries a stark, lovely contrast to the crimson holly berries and deep green foliage, then it seems only prudent to kiss each other for luck. And if one kiss is lucky, then it follows that a hundred kisses should be a hundred times luckier. (They make their own luck these days, it's true, but even still, it couldn't hurt. It's tradition, after all.)

The sitting room has become home to a tall, live fir tree, deeply verdant and too frightened to drop a single needle, in a large planter. It's festooned with tinsel garlands, strings of golden beads, and twinkling fairy lights. There are wooden apples painted a shiny, bright red and intricate little birds made of gilt and glass and fragrant pomander oranges studded with cloves. Aziraphale has somehow even managed to find a set of Christmas baubles in his particular tartan; Crowley accuses him of cheating and miracling them up, because even the tackiest of Christmas shops wouldn't have sold such an abomination. Aziraphale does not contradict him, but is nevertheless unremorseful, grinning as he hangs each one on the tree, right at eye level.

Crowley had just happened to already have the tree in a corner of the conservatory, having picked it up several months prior at the garden centre in the neighboring town. It hadn't been meant as a Christmas tree, he insists; in the spring, he means to plant it in the garden, to replace the fir tree in the southeast corner that had died sometime before they bought the place. But right now it's just sitting there, growing lazy and complacent in the warm conservatory, so it may as well pull its weight as a holiday decoration for the time being. He'll have to talk to Aziraphale about reining in the praise, though; this tree is growing spoiled and coddled, despite his daily threats. It's wiggling more than trembling these days, and if things continue in this vein both the tree and Aziraphale will be insufferable.

There are candles all over the house, tiny tapers nestled in the boughs of the tree and larger pillars wrapped about their bases with greenery on the mantle and windowsills. None of them are real; they’ve both had enough of bare, hungry flames for the rest of their lives. Instead, these candles are made of fine, delicate glass instead of wax, the stems frosted, the flames crystal clear. They are, for lack of a better term, battery-powered, although not with the sort of battery one could buy at the corner shop. Each is suffused with a minute bit of energy. Crowley holds Aziraphale’s hand and shows him how to direct a thin stream of their melded power into the tip of the glass flame of each one. The ethereal and occult sparks perpetually twirl round and round each other in hypnotic patterns, creating light whenever they make contact. The beauty of this, the _miracle_ of it, is that when the two components of the power system are perfectly balanced, it will never burn itself out.

It's very much like the process of creating stars, in extreme miniature. The ability comes back to Crowley, instinctively, like the inexorable rush of blood through human veins, even though he'd thought he had lost the trick of it forever when he Fell. The silver-and-glass star they make for the top of the tree is miniscule compared to the stars Crowley used to make, would be lost in the vastness of space, but it is nevertheless a complete, perfect microcosm of the real thing. 

Together they create a small galaxy of lights in this seaside cottage, in the dark of December.

*

Evenings, more often than not, find them sitting on the blanket-draped sofa, which has been transplanted here from the bookshop; it's shabby and worn but they both agree it's still hands-down more comfortable than any other couch money or miracle could buy. The light from the candles and the tree, as warm and golden as they are, is arguably too low and flickery to read by, but this is no obstacle for an angel who can read in the dark if he so desires. Crowley's sunglasses are on the stand beside the front door; he doesn't bother with them at all in the house these days. 

They're each several cups deep into the mulled wine that's been simmering on the Aga all evening. Aziraphale is sitting mostly upright and reading, but Crowley has given up all pretense of sitting in favor of laying on his back with his knees thrown over the armrest and his head in Aziraphale's lap. There's music playing on the phonograph, some sort of choral Christmas thing; the voices have an echoing quality that recalls the church the choir was undoubtedly singing in. It's just holy enough to send a tingle, not unpleasant, down Crowley's spine.

"Oh!" exclaims Aziraphale as a new track comes on, "This is the Boar's Head Carol! Have you ever heard the story they tell at Queens in Oxford?"

"Something about Arish—Arti—that Greek philosopher fellow, right? Aristotle! The syllabub guy. We met him once."

"Syllogism, I think it is. And yes, we did spend a few lovely evenings in his company, back in Athens. But right, we're getting distracted. Back to the carol. The story goes, there was a student once who was walking through the forest reading Aristotle when he was charged by a fearsome wild boar, and he saved himself by thrusting the book into the beast's mouth, thus choking it to death. Do you know what I think about that, Crowley?" Aziraphale's voice has taken on a heated tone, and he's gesturing animatedly with his hands; the angel, a little drunkenly, clearly has an opinion that he is dying to express.

"No. What?"

" _I_ think it's a _bloody shame_ to disrespect a book like that, is what I think! I would _never_ trust that fellow with a single one of mine."

Crowley loves Aziraphale when he's like this, all passionate and indignant and beautiful, but he also can't help teasing him, just a little.

"But what if a fearsome beast charges you, while you’re wandering in the greenwood with your nose stuck in your book, angel?" he asks, mock-seriously, and then sits up abruptly and hisses right in Aziraphale's face, all acid eyes and vicious, bared fangs.

"Don’t be ridiculous, dear," says Aziraphale placidly. He takes the time to place a bookmark and set his novel carefully aside, before turning to kiss the fearsome serpent right on his fanged mouth. "I know plenty of ways to tame wild creatures, and not a single one of them involves damaging a book in the process."

"Mmmph," agrees the fearsome serpent between kisses, tamed for the moment at least, and utterly content. 

*

On the afternoon of the twenty-first, Crowley takes a drive up to Oxfordshire to drop off several heavy, tartan-draped hampers packed full of the biscuits and cakes and confections that Aziraphale has been making for days, filling the house with the rich, warm scents of spices and ginger and treacle. They're planning on getting together with Anathema, Newt, Tracy, Shadwell, and the Them on Boxing Day, but Aziraphale is adamant that his hampers be delivered today, so that their friends will have ample time to enjoy the treats. Aziraphale himself is doing much the same today, on foot, with slightly less overburdened hampers, making the rounds of their new neighbors. Crowley had whined just a little bit about being a glorified delivery driver, but on the whole he would much rather spend the afternoon visiting with the Tadfield crew than with the little old ladies in the village, so the complaining had mostly been for show.

He stops in London on the way back to check in on the bookshop, which is tightly shut against everyone and everything but the two of them, popping inside to retrieve a book that Aziraphale has decided he cannot live without at the cottage. To an outside observer, there's no rhyme or reason to the shelving plan at the bookshop, and yet the book is exactly where Aziraphale had said it would be: on the third shelf of the second bookcase beneath the northeast radian of the oculus dome. Book in hand, Crowley pulls the door shut and locks up, using the same iron key that Aziraphale had given him back when he'd first opened the shop. The sun has set since he's been inside, on this shortest of days, and the streetlights have come on, warm and yellow in the gloomy twilight. People bustle by on the sidewalk, wrapped up against the cold, their arms full of purchases and packages. He can't resist getting up to a bit of his old mischief and doing a little holiday decorating of his own: one snap, and the sidewalk is strewn with invitingly shiny coins, twinkling in the streetlight. They're glued down, of course, although some people – the homeless man on the corner, the mother who's getting off an extra shift at the pub so she can have enough money to buy her children Christmas gifts, the little boy who's tired and cranky after being dragged along by his father to what feels like every store in the city – might find it easier than most to dislodge them. 

With a satisfied smirk, Crowley slides into the drivers' seat of the Bentley. It's full of the smell of butter: on the passenger seat rests a box of croissants from the French bakery they used to frequent all the time when they lived in the city. According to Aziraphale, who had conducted a thorough study of all the contenders in the city, their pastries are nearly as good as the ones in Paris, plus one doesn't need to speak French in order to acquire them. They’re meant for breakfast tomorrow, along with the blackberry jam Crowley made at the end of the summer, when all of the half-wild bramble thickets at the edges of their garden had borne fruit all at once. It remains to be seen though whether there will be any croissants left by morning once Aziraphale gets his hands on them. (And yes, this is not Crowley's first rodeo, so there are also a mille-feuille and a lemon tart in the box, but that's still no guarantee that the croissants will survive until dawn. The temptation of perfectly laminated, buttery pastry is strong.)

It's full dark by the time the Bentley passes beyond London city limits, and past moonrise by the time it reaches the village. The night is clear and cold, and the sky is sprinkled with stars. Out here, away from the light pollution of the city, Crowley can pick out the ones he remembers making. They are very, very far away, and very, very long ago. For the first time since he'd come to Earth, the pang he feels at the sight is more sweet than bitter. 

It’s the winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest, darkest night of the year. The crunch of the Bentley's wheels on the thin layer of fresh-fallen snow covering the gravel of the drive is loud in the still, quiet night as he turns the corner and sees before him their cottage, with a star-bright light in every window welcoming him home.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the [Boar's Head Carol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7adETaOYiQ). Someone told me the story about the student and the book of Aristotle the other day, and the only thing I could think about was how incensed Aziraphale would be about ruining a perfectly good book that way.
> 
> You can reblog this story on tumblr [here.](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com/post/638154462128750593/solstice-lights-a-good-omens-fanfiction-by)


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